TLDR Stock Options - <AUTHOR> https://tldroptions.io/ <comment><USER2> Our goal with building this was not to be comprehensive, but to give founders and employees a way to have a more productive conversation about options and what they are worth. Too many startup employees I meet don't properly value the options they have, and too many potential hires don't negotiate for the right things, and wind up disappointed.

We hope this will take a small step towards correcting this problem.

<comment><USER3> Neat tool, I was able to put more than 100% ownership into a Company though and I don't think that should be possible.

<comment><USER4> If you press "9" enough times: [http://imgur.com/a/wUvOy](http://imgur.com/a/wUvOy)

<comment><USER5> Yah but is the math wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From a purely monetary and risk-based viewpoint, whether to join a start-up depends on how much money you already have.

Suppose you regard tldroptions.io's probability distributions and outcomes as correct, and the only thing you care about is maximizing the long-term rate of goal of your capital. Then the Kelly Criterion ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion) , a.k.a. Fortune's Formula) says that you should try to maximize the geometric mean of your capital, which amounts to maximizing the expected logarithm of your capital.

To make this concrete, suppose you are choosing between two options:

\- (Startup): Working at series C+ start-up for three years, where you receive 1% equity and $100k/yr salary, and have a 20% chance of getting ~$60 million in 3 years (according to tldroptions.io)

\- (AmaGooFaceSoft): Working at AmaGooFaceSoft for three years, where you receive $300k/yr total comp (according to patio11)

For simplicity, I will ignore taxes and the time value of money. All monetary amounts below are in millions of dollars. If you have no money in the bank to start with, the geometric means of your alternatives after 3 years are:

\- (Startup): exp(.2 log[60+0.3 ] + .8 log[0.3]) = $0.86 million

\- (AmaGooFaceSoft) = $0.9 million

In this case, AmaGooFaceSoft is slightly better.

On the other hand, suppose you already have $1 million. After 3 years you will still have the $1 million, plus your salary and whatever money you get from your equity. Here the geometric means are:

\- (Startup) exp(0.2 log[6+1+0.3] + .8 log[1 + 0.3]) = $2.8 million

\- (AmaGooFaceSoft): 1+0.9 = $1.9 million

In this case, it's better to join the start-up.

The base salary matters a lot. If you have no money in the bank, but you get $150k year at the startup instead of $100k, then the geometric mean of the Startup option after 3 years is better than that of AmaGooFaceSoft:

\- (Startup): exp(.2 log[60+0.45 ] + .8 log[0.45]) = $1.2 million

<comment><USER7> 1% equity in a series C startup sounds wildly optimistic. You would most likely not get that much equity as a senior software engineer. It's interesting that your first calculation still favours the other choice.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I agree. There's no way that an engineer is getting integer percentages of equity after seed round. Maybe if they're highly recruited, in which case Google et al. would pay more.

<comment><USER9> Who would get integer percentages after seed round?

<comment><USER10> C-suite hires that have other choices and capital investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shit could always hit the fan though.

I joined Zenefits when everyone had dollar signs in their eyes. It felt like the roaring 20s (or at least the accounts I've heard of them).

How are they doing nowadays?

I always say don't compromise on salary for equity. Compromise for the experience, for an entrance into the field, because the chick at the counter was digging you, but not because of some payout you think you'll get in the future.

<comment><USER12> They're still a unicorn aren't they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is fantastically useful both as a side-of-the-barn estimator, and a teaching tool. Thanks!

Two things a lot of startup employees are unaware of that are worth highlighting: they actually have to buy their options, which eats into returns, and that if they leave the company they have a limited window (30 days, typically) in which to do so. In would behoove them to save/plan for this fact.

<comment><USER14> > they actually have to buy their options

Yup. It honestly astounds me how many people don't factor this into their decision-making. Your _only_ equity compensation on joining is the delta between your strike price and the current market value of your stock. This is often very little, far less than you give up in salary at many companies.

<comment><USER15> How does this tool help you work that out though.

<comment><USER16> This tool reflects that profit by assuming a current strike price based on average valuation changes between rounds. Instead of saying that you get the full value of the stock you buy, the calculation takes into account that you also have to purchase the stock.

This tool doesn't explain the dynamics going into the estimated profits (though it links to things that do), but it helps people avoid over-estimating the value by missing dynamics like strike price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's easy to point all the details that matter in valuing your stock options -- liquidity preferences, strike price, options vs RSUs. The genius stroke here is to focus on the two big details that matter (% ownership and exit value) and focused on that.

Caveat: this doesn't work in a "down exit" less than the previous round's value.

As @bethcodes says, this is _not_ a calculator, because while these two numbers will get you within a factor of 2, knowing the details will help you get even closer.

(Disclosure: I built a calculator to help you do that: [http://www.optionvalue.io/calculator/](http://www.optionvalue.io/calculator/))

<comment><USER2> Totally agree. We hope this will be an on-ramp to more sophisticated tools and analysis for beginners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a bunch of options in my company, but I don't know what the total number outstanding are, so I have no idea what percentage of the company I own. 1) Is this a common scenario? 2) Is there a way I can find out what the total number outstanding are?

<comment><USER19> Send an email to the people who manage the options. Say that you are trying to figure out your finances, and would like to know how many options are outstanding.

Note that there are complicated ways that that more options might appear, depending on the company (e.g. sometimes debt can convert to equity) that they might be a bit more hesitant to talk about, but they should be pretty open about the total number of shares currently outstanding.

<comment><USER20> This. If you have a CFO, contact that person. If not, then anyone in finance, or a partner. Everyone is there for pay. This is a reasonable request.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> \+ Most new sparkly eyed employees who sacrificed cash pay for options are blissfully unaware of preferred shared.

This could keep slider at $0.00 for a longer (further on the right side).

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the feedback!

Preferred shares are reflected in the current payoffs; that's what's responsible for the "low exit" portion of the slider not paying off at all. Are you talking about participation preferences that let VCs double-dip? Those are a whole different kettle of fish, but also not as standard as preferred shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is an area that YC has the oppotunity to step up and lead founders to be transparent but chooses not to. I wish i understood why.

<comment><USER23> information asymmetry is part of the secret to business success

<comment><USER22> I assume you are not being sarcastic. It is true, but in this case its a limiting to early stage companies. I know, I personally will not join one that doesn't disclose liquidation preference, type of shares I had etc. unless they were offering more base comp than big corp to offset my risk of joining a company with a 65%+ chance of failure.

By disclosing terms of the shares, great companies could attract better people. You are not going to trick good people with shares, only fools.

<comment><USER24> It might be part of the reason why you tend to see older people in bigco and younger people in startup co.

<comment><USER22> I actually think the biggest reason is that start ups need an army of really good individual contributors. They dont need managers or leaders until they scale. At that point, the speed is too fast for experienced people to just enter so young people become managers. And young people dont want to manage people older than them. Bias continues.

<comment><USER22> Just curious why the downvotes?

<comment><USER25> You offer no particular evidence for your claims, they are unpersuasive and you manage to insult both older and younger employees in the space of three sentences.

A. You assume young people are "really good individual contributors" and older people aren't, which is very often exactly backwards.

B. It has been my experience that startups often hire people with management experience as they scale.

C. Your assertion that young people don't want to manage old people is unsupported and pretty much just sounds bitter.

The original hypothesis that younger developers are more likely to be overconfident about their chances of success and so are willing to accept lower effective pay makes way more sense than that older developers are less good at being individual contributors.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for summarizing. I completely see your point, but I want to explain in a little more detail. Wasn't trying to insult anyone!

> A. You assume young people are "really good individual contributors" and > older people aren't, which is very often exactly backwards.

Not my assumption. But, as someone ages, if they are an excellent individual contributor, they often find themselves in management roles. There are exceptions, but the real problem is that as people age, they want to be called "people managers". And, startups don't need people managers, they need contributors so there is a mismatch.

If an older person only wants to be an individual contributor, there are of course places for them, but my contention is that the cross section is extremely small. I can see why it seemed insulting, that isn't want I meant.

> B. It has been my experience that startups often hire people with management > experience as they scale.

Sure, they do, but more often than not, they are hiring their strongest individual contributors from within. Only a small percentage of people hired are hired from very senior roles.

> C. Your assertion that young people don't want to manage old people is > unsupported and pretty much just sounds bitter.

I have worked in 3 large organizations and 2 small organizations, it is extremely rare for a younger person to hire someone older than them. I cannot imagine that there is evidence counter to this claim. I have seen it repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice app! I have to admit this made me chuckle:

> Instead of trying to get the _right_ answer, we set out to build a tool that > could get _an_ answer.

I'm curious though, from where did you get the numbers about the likelihood of an exit? I thought it was pretty interesting that a Series C is statistically less likely to make you money than a Series A, according to this.

<comment><USER16> Hi! I'm the engineer :) I used two sources of data: [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital- funnel-2/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-funnel-2/) which was specific to tech companies and [http://files.pitchbook.com/pdf/PitchBook_1H_2016_VC_Valuatio...](http://files.pitchbook.com/pdf/PitchBook_1H_2016_VC_Valuations_Report.pdf) which covered more than just tech companies. Both only consider companies backed by American VCs.

Interestingly, data I found from 2010 was _very_ different. It seems like more recently the popularity of early acquisitions (especially in biotech) and more robust seed funding have shifted the distribution of outcomes. It could definitely change again: success rates are by no means consistent.

<comment><USER27> Serious question: Would you have enough data at this point to tell me how many lottery tickets I could buy to replace the odds of winning on startup options based on option metadata (startup round, options granted, etc)?

Think of it as investment diversification.

<comment><USER16> In the worst case, an option is going to be worth 0 and in the best case it's going to be worth > 0, so the value of an option is always positive until the company actually dies.

Lottery tickets, unlike options, cost money up front. You still can't lose more than you pay, so the payoff curve is similarly non-linear, but unless you can trade options for cash options will always beat lottery tickets.

Lottery tickets are easy to diversify in that you can buy a variety of numbers. (The times when lotteries have become a net-positive buy the buyers takes advantage of this fact.) Employee startup options are more like buying one set of numbers over and over again. On the other hand, the odds of getting any payoff from options are somewhere around 15-30%, whereas the odds of getting any payoff from a California SuperLotto Plus ticket are ~4.3%. Because you can diversify ticket numbers, you could get the same odds of getting any payoff by buying 14 tickets with different Mega numbers, which would earn you $1 to the $14 you spent. If you could buy stock in many different startups, you would be called a "venture capitalist" and those folks on average do much better than people who play the lottery.

Finally, the maximum payout of a lottery ticket is capped and known ahead of time. The largest lottery win in the US was $656 million. On the other hand you don't know going into a startup what the payoff for that particular startup is going to be, and the largest exit of all time was Facebook at $104 billion. Just like with the lottery you don't know how many ways you are splitting the payoff, but unlike the lottery it's going to be based on the decisions of the board/founders, rather than random.

Basically, the lottery is a lot simpler than a startup, with few sources of actual uncertainty, and so there's no real risk involved. It is just gambling: you can do the math to figure out what edge the house has and figure out for sure that you shouldn't do it. Startup options, on the other hand, reflect actually-unknown unknowns, and so are more valuable to those who hold more- optimist-than-average beliefs about the probability of that particular startup succeeding.

<comment><USER28> > In the worst case, an option is going to be worth 0 and in the best case > it's going to be worth > 0, so the value of an option is always positive > until the company actually dies.

That's only true as long as you're still working at the company. If you leave, you have to exercise, and then the worst case becomes negative.

<comment><USER16> You can also choose not to exercise and just walk away, in which case the value is still 0. Though I imagine a lot of people would have trouble doing that even if they didn't think the company was doing great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This was linked on HN previously - "What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining A Unicorn"

tl;dr in one word: "Beware"

[https://gist.github.com/yossorion/4965df74fd6da6cdc280ec57e8...](https://gist.github.com/yossorion/4965df74fd6da6cdc280ec57e83a202d)

</comment><comment><USER30> A QA engineer loads up a webpage and orders 0.1 percent of a company. Then 1%. Then back to 0.1%. Then clicks the down arrow -- ah, zero percent.

Then clicks the down arrow again. Negative numbers ensue.

True story, except I'm not usually a QA engineer.

<comment><USER31> I bet you it's still 100% coverage tested...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find a more important question is "What percent should I ask for?"

The company I work for is about to get major investment and they are transitioning from an LLC. Only the 3 founders have equity currently. As engineers we have no idea how much to ask for. Because we have already been working without equity. How do we account for the years we've worked? Or that our salaries aren't that great right now.

<comment><USER33> Wealthfront used to have a great compensation estimation tool: [https://blog.wealthfront.com/startup-employee-equity- compens...](https://blog.wealthfront.com/startup-employee-equity- compensation/)

But it was mysteriously deleted without reason.

<comment><USER32> Thanks, that at least gives some area for me to guess within. Noting ".15 – the percent of shares that employees excluding executives typically own"

So I would take it we should ask north of this number. Being that we're small, don't have great salaries, and have been working for the company "because we believe in it" before getting any real promise of compensation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Are these numbers accurate for "% of companies will never exit"?

Seed 74%

Series A 65%

Series B 68%

Series C+ 71%

If so I'm a little surprised that seed and series C+ companies have approximately the same chances never exiting.

<comment><USER35> Series A and B are easier (cheaper) to acquire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I tested you get $0 unless the IPO/sell is over $40M. No matter if Seed or Series C or how much of the company you own.

<comment><USER37> Yes, but the default is set to the employee getting 0.01% of a company that raised series A. That's a very pessimistic percentage. Think of it this way: the startup could hire 100 employees, each at 0.01%, and only give up 1% of its total equity. That's way too low.

Typical grants for post-series A employees (the 10 to 50 first employees) are at least 10X more than that. With that calculator, you get something (~ $20K) for a $40M exit. Not 0. Not amazing either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Needs an NPV field and equivalent effective average salary difference per year. :-)

</comment><comment><USER39> Why probability of exit of series B company lower than series A? That sounds, at least, counterintuitive.

<comment><USER40> Total guess: maybe there's a greater chance of exit for very early stage (easy acquisition target) or very late stage (IPO). A lot of the failures that make the news are companies that hit the Series B or C phase and realized they had no path to IPO or acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yep, IMO unless you are a founder, if your company isn't one of the top companies of the decade your 4-6 years of pay-cut toil as an early employee will likely just not be worth it, at all.

The expected value of working at an early startup gets overestimated, by a lot. If you're optimizing your career, either make the most you can at an established company, or start a startup.

Or... work at an enlightened startup, that understands the state of affairs, and offers really generous lifestyle advantages - i.e. go work remotely for a couple months if you want, otherwise they are just exploiting misinformed young people and their founders likely have some ego issues.

<comment><USER42> I completely disagree. It's really not hard to find a company with great product market fit, say series B, get a bunch of equity, a decent salary, and wait a couple years for your equity to be valuable. Assuming the company is successful (of course there's risk there, but by series B a _lot_ has been mitigated), your equity will likely be quite valuable. I actually think, risk adjusted, that's the easiest way to make a bunch of money.

I joined a startup long after product market fit, it was pretty obviously going to be moderately successful, and I was employee ~100. I never worked too terribly hard, and my equity was worth about 50% of my (not too low) salary each year.

If you're not joining at or before series A, a _lot_ of the risk has been mitigated, and there are markets opening up to sell your equity into.

<comment><USER6> > my [startup] equity was worth about 50% of my salary each year.

The equity of many AmaGooFaceSoft employees is also worth at least 50% of their yearly salary.

<comment><USER42> Yes but that's if I were to sell it after ~1 year at a company you've likely never heard of. If I wait 3 more and there's a large exit it could easily be worth millions.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a convenient way to sell your startup equity after ~1 year? (i.e. before there's an exit)

<comment><USER43> There is a developed secondary market for venture-backed companies' stock. (Source: I do this.)

<comment><USER44> I thought private stock transactions were subject to board approval, or is that just Canada?

<comment><USER43> It depends on the company. Some companies are quite liberal with transfers. If you have a _bona fide_ offer, they'll amend the cap table. For others, my having a relationship with the founder or Board is critical. A good starting point for American companies is is their Certificate of Incorporation. If you exercised options, the Restricted Stock Purchase Agreement should also contain terms, _e.g._ the company's transfer policy or right of first refusal.

I have never heard of a Canadian company looking to raise capital structuring itself under Canadian law. Commonly, you'd have a Canadian law subsidiary wholly owned by a Delaware corporation.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Hire a lawyer before selling private stock. Do not take investment or legal advice from my Internet comments; they are neither._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A little monkey patching and you've got some salary info too! [https://pastebin.com/3WdXMSdL](https://pastebin.com/3WdXMSdL)

Unfortunately doesn't parse the "$1 million" mark. But that's ok, because let's be honest. It's not going to exit that high.

</comment><comment><USER45> Something feels off with the data here. 65% of Series A companies will never exit, but 71% of Series C+ companies will never exit?

Edit: Thought about this a little deeper and it is possible with a lot of companies exiting prior to the Series C, but suspect the data set of Series C+ companies may just be too small?

<comment><USER16> The data set is definitely small (CB Insights data only had 61 companies that raised four rounds, for example), but it also surprised me how many Series C companies failed to raise. It might be because earlier acquisitions are an easier exit than trying to become a self-sustaining company with predictable growth? I would love to see more exploration of that question, though.

<comment><USER46> > It might be because earlier acquisitions are an easier exit than trying to > become a self-sustaining company with predictable growth?

This is exactly it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Equity is confusing and the various moving parts all matter. It's often difficult to know what % of the Company you own, but you are entitled to knowing the 409(a) valuation which is going to be equal to your strike price when your options are granted. As this increases, you have an opportunity to capture some value at some point if/when the company has a private market, is acquired, or goes public. I've always believed this process is personal and not one that "general guidelines" can always solve. Self-awareness is critical. [https://www.vestboard.com/okta-inc-ipo-what-employees- should...](https://www.vestboard.com/okta-inc-ipo-what-employees-should-be- doing-now/)

</comment><comment><USER48> Links don't appear to be working to [https://captable.io](https://captable.io) or [https://angel.co/clear/how_much](https://angel.co/clear/how_much)

<comment><USER16> Thanks! I really appreciate you letting me know; it's fixed now :)

(For the curious, I added a click mask to the modal contents and forgot to update the links to fire anyway.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Shouldn't a TLDR about stock options include critical information like 83(b) election, etc?

<comment><USER25> That's probably in the too long tool people didn't bother reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "This simulation doesn't estimate taxation at all."

Well, then it's misleading.

Between AMT, capital gains / income tax, there's potential for a huge chunk of what you might earn to be removed.

<comment><USER51> I think the point is, "The number is probably not as big as you're thinking... oh and by the way, also even smaller because of taxes"

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Hi Eric, Tiho, Marcus, etc.

This is a fantastic start. Yes, angel.co/clear was complicated. I hope you have better luck driving adoption.

What you are charting at the top is the _company_ exit value. But the UI controls enter info tied to the _employee_. You should chart the _employee 's_ exit value.

You should also put the "or not*" controls as totally optional toggles as an exploratory UI. I.e. the user can toggle "preference" and see what it does to their value.

</comment><comment><USER53> So taking the numbers at face value, we should be able to calculate the max acceptable cost you should be willing to incur to get those stock options. If you get, e.g. a 20% chance at a payout of 500 000 USD, not allowing for interest you might earn if applicable, or opportunity cost, whatever you need to do to get the options should not be worth more than 100 000 usd.

Reality is probably a little fuzzier than that, though.

</comment><comment><USER54> Thank you to LTSE and everyone participating in this discussion. It is filled with GEMS of wisdom that a junior like myself is absorbing like a sponge.

</comment><comment><USER55> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be assuming a seed round valuation of $40 million (it's returning $0 unless the exit is > $40m). That's absurd.

Edit: the assumption of 0.01% is also absurd.

A simplified calculator should include reasonable defaults. This is like a mortgage calculator called tldrCanYouAffordAHouse.com that assumes 25% interest rates and doesn't disclose that.

<comment><USER46> Why is the assumption of 0.01% absurd? From what I have seen, that's exactly what an early employee can expect. 10% of the available stock gets split between the early employees, most of which (9%) goes to the founders/c-suite. The other 90% is reserved for investors, of which the founder(s) may be one.

If you have 100 employees by the time you exit, and 1% of the stock was divided among them (exactly the situation where I am), each would get.. 0.01%. That is 0.0001 of the issued shares..... as options.

This is no longer uncommon.

<comment><USER55> That's not correct. The founders already have stock before any round. They typically don't get any of the ESOP. In early rounds the ESOP is essentially carved out of the founders stock, it doesn't make sense to give some of it to them (just negotiate a smaller ESOP). Also, founders are not considered investors in the sense you mention (different stock classes).

Secondly "by the time you exit" isn't relevant. Your stock is setup by when you join. If you join a company with 100 people, sure you get less. But 0.01% for Seed/A isn't even close. If that's what you get offered, don't take it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Maybe add a field for salary difference vs 'expected market rate' and compute the amount of money you'd be looking at over six years investing the difference in something like a vanguard fund.

As an example - say you traded around 60k a year in cash in return for higher equity. In six years you're looking at around half a mil which means with, say .2 in a Series A, you're looking at a pretty big exit (i.e 700M) before you even have a chance of breaking even. This is obviously a terrible choice (i.e care for 20 dollars or a chance at 20 dollars)

To make it 'worth it', from an 'expected value' POV you'd need to make 2-3 million on around a 3.5B exit which are, of course, exceedingly rare.

You also have to be careful about things like options windows on exit, tricky term sheets with liquidation preferences for preferred shares, etc.

I'm going through this process now and it's shocking how most people really have no idea how this stuff works. Even with recruiters/HR/CTOs/etc who deal with this stuff day to day.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'll never forget when a startup tried to poach me to be Employee #2 or 3 and refused to even match my previous salary and suggested that I really wasn't taking their equity (.15%, I think?) seriously enough. I told them that if they had a billion dollar exit in five years it still wouldn't bring me up to what I wanted, and then they said, "Well, all the tech guys we talked to said $YOUR_COMPANY overpays by 20%. We also think that we're spending too much time talking about money here and are worried you have the wrong priorities".

<comment><USER58> I had a similar offer. $0 pay and maybe 1% equity. Sent them a spreadsheet explaining how inappropriate the offer was.

<comment><USER59> Were any of you guys able to negotiate a better offer? I am in a similar position where I have been offered comparable salary but only 3% equity as the 4th member. Not sure it's worth giving up the job security without a higher stake.

<comment><USER14> I've negotiated with multiple founders and gotten several good offers, including $150k+ salary and single digit equity. The important part is not to fall in love with a company before an offer—a significant number of founders think engineers should work for under-market, and it's not worth talking with them.

<comment><USER59> If you have the time, Id appreciate advice. I was offered low 6 figures base salary plus 3% equity for a CTO role at a startup. I would be the 4th member Joining. As I know, there is a CEO bankrolling most of it, an expert in the field of the business who is taking little pay, and a marketing guy who is unknown but most likely taking some payment. Prior to the offer letter I built a prototype (out of contract) as a sort of demonstration I could do the job. However, I wish to be compensated for the rights to the prototype upon joining as it is about 50k lines of code. What would you do in my shoes?

<comment><USER14> > I was offered low 6 figures base salary plus 3% equity for a CTO role at a > startup.

That's not an unreasonable offer. You should try to negotiate it up to around $150k.

> However, I wish to be compensated for the rights to the prototype upon > joining as it is about 50k lines of code.

I'd suggest you mostly give up on that idea. It's naive thinking. The market value of this code is close to 0—it's very unlikely anyone else would want to buy it from you. At best, it's just an additional reason to hire you (instead of someone else).

<comment><USER59> I appreciate your insight. One thing I might add to bolster my reason for wanting compensation is that the prototype is critical to their business and without it they will be set back several months which they cannot afford. Furthermore, their vesting schedule gives them the potential to work me to death in the first year and then take everything I've built (past and future) and show me the door before anything vests.

On the other hand, if I walk, I might have wasted a few months time but at least I will have comparable salary in a stable job. 3% in early seed rounds just seemed pathetic to me when my role would be vital to the companies ability to grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Fyi to the site developer: I highly recommend giving the links at the bottom of the page their own routes, as clicking on one makes it impossible to use the browser back button and return to the main page.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm having trouble grokking the results here. If I put in 50 basis points for a seed-funded company it calculates as no return until a $40M exit. I'd like to see the justification for this.

</comment><comment><USER62> It doesn't matter what percentage of a "seed company" I put, if it has a "low exit" (<$25M) I get $0... How is that possible?

<comment><USER51> Lots of investors have "Preference" which means they get a guaranteed minimum return on their investment. A rough example is like a 2x preference means when they put in $10M, the first $20M of the sale price goes to just those investors first . So if it sold for $20M, then everyone else gets $0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Sorry if I missed something obvious, is the number averaged out per year or total over 6ish years? (nowhere mentioned on website or help link)

<comment><USER16> It's the total, and reflects all shares whether or not they are likely to have vested by then; vesting schedules vary widely, and hopefully are something people will be told about when getting their offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The answer is to start a startup. Before that, work at a startup. See if you like it. Specifically, work at a YC startup then apply to YC.

</comment><comment><USER65> Does this include dilution?

<comment><USER16> Yep! That's part of what changes with the round: we assume a relatively- average dilution of 35% per round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Bookmarked!

</comment><comment><USER67> There's also another result: negative!

You could owe taxes on money you never saw. Under the AMT rules, if you exercise options at a discounted price, you have to consider the discount as "income". If several years later, when you're ready to sell and the stock is below what you paid for it, you'll still owe the taxes on your discounted price.

Ask your tax person for the details before engaging in any stock option purchase.

<comment><USER68> You will get credits to offset this in later years. It was far more painful after the Dotcom crash before the carry-forward rules were added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> #savedyouaclick

Answer is $0</comment>


Nuclear waste issues freeze permits for all U.S. power plants - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/nuclear-plants-waste/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Am I the only person who thought that this is about "Nuclear waste" issuing "freeze permits"?</comment>


Microsoft announces new Surface Book with 16h of battery life - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/26/13418678/microsoft-upgraded-surface-book-16-hour-battery-life <comment><USER2> The most amazing thing here is: new Book is actually HEAVIER than previous version (3.63 vs. 3.48 pounds) in order to increase battery life. I dare Apple to do the same with their MacBooks, instead of that tired "thinner and lighter" mantra.</comment>


Show HN: I deliver best designs of Dribbble to your inbox every morning - <AUTHOR> http://dailybbble.herokuapp.com/?

<comment><USER2> s/best/popular</comment>


Ask HN: Hate SOPA? What technological solutions do you propose? - <AUTHOR>

Techies have been extremely vocal about how bad SOPA is for the Internet. How about proposing an alternative with technology in mind? <comment><USER2> I don't think it's a technology issue. The US government needs to address SOPA as a trade issue, and work on establishing bilateral agreements with other countries. (i.e. piratesite.co.uk has been found in US court to be in violation of US copyright, UK needs to enforce the ruling, and vice-versa).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm of the opinion that asking that question is almost akin to asking what technological solution should be used to give Russian organized crime your credit card numbers, if malware with a keylogger in it is bad. I don't think the problem SOPA purports to address is a legitimate problem, and to the extent that it might be, plausible solutions to it that don't involve setting more reasonable priorities would be bigger problems.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ron Conway seems to think there's a solution within technology (2:45 mark of this clip) [http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/tctv-live-at-sf-vs-sopa- the...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/tctv-live-at-sf-vs-sopa-the-biggest- tech-protest-in-decades/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been more considering technological solutions to the problem of governmental reform. The machinery of government could use some repairs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Piracy is not a big enough problem to deserve a legislative solution.

<comment><USER6> Yeah! The second part of a prima facie case for policy change is to show that the proposed solution solves the problem. The third part is to show that the proposed solution doesn't cause more problems than it solves. That would be "cost/benefit analysis".

Show us that a problem exists, that someone gets harmed, and how much that harm amounts to. And please, don't use propaganda techniques. You'll just look bad.</comment></comment>


Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of-renowned-Dan-Brown.html <comment><USER2> I like the following quote by Neil Gaiman about 50 Shades and other best- sellers:

 _" If ever you're curious, go and look at the annual bestseller lists for years gone by. You'll find a lot of books that sold an unbelievable number of copies when they were fashionable. I'm sure The Revolt of Mamie Stover also sold more books than Ray Bradbury will ever have sold in his whole life in its year. Have you read it? Heard of it? Off the top of my head, Peyton Place in its year, or The Gospel According to Peanuts, or The Ginger Man, or Jonathan Livingstone Seagull in their years undoubtedly outsold all of Ray Bradbury. But when their day is done, mostly those kind of books drift back into the void, and go, if not out of print, then back into a world where nobody quite knows why they sold that many copies any more. (Do you know who Gilbert Patten was? He sold about 500 million books in his lifetime…)

Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury sold quite a lot of books in 1956, and quite a lot of books in 2006 (Fahrenheit 451 alone has sold over 5 million copies), and he found his readers for his books and his stories in every year. And I'll wager a hundred years from now he'll still be read…

So, honestly, I wouldn't fret, if I were you.

Nothing's changed. Some books are, often inexplicably, bestsellers. That's been the way of it for a hundred and fifty years or more.

Read the books you love, tell people about authors you like, and don't worry about it."_ [1]

[1] [http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/25461828644/hi-neil- in-a-...](http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/25461828644/hi-neil-in-a-recent- vlogbros-video-hank-green)</comment>


Inviting the adressbook - <AUTHOR>

Everybody wants his users to spread the word about his application. If it's a good one, they usually do it on their own. Sometimes it seems to help to gently nudge users by offering them to load their freemail adressbook so they just have to select from their contacts and massmail invitations for you. While I would never use such a feature, it has apparently become standard for social applications.<p>Anyone like to share his experience about how this is accepted? <comment><USER2> As others have said, normal users don't mind this. However this works best in applications which have an inherent benefit in connecting to a lot of people. So while this may work very well for linkedin and facebook, it may not work too well for say a youtube

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a slippery slope - it certainly helps getting users to join, but it has implications on privacy and trust. That being said I think that most users will probably see it as a service and not a threat. The thing to notice here is that YC users and techies see the problems with this approach, but normal users don't. They just see the service, not the implications of it. So if you don't abuse it I think there are certainly cases where it makes sense to do.

<comment><USER4> I think the term "slippery slope" is far too overused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't use it either, but there must be some who do. Otherwise I couldn't explain that you can already buy the feature (e.g. <http://www.getmycontacts.com>)

<comment><USER6> Please don't do it this way. Google, Yahoo and Windows Live now all have APIs you can access to fetch contacts without having to handle the users credentials.

Getting contacts via delegated authentication should avoid aggravating the technophiles/hackers/security-aware (too much) whilst still allowing you to 'go viral'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever I get auto-generated invitations based on systems like these I delete and ignore them or alternatively tag them as SPAM if I receive them from more than one person.

It leaves me with a very negative impression of the site or service before I have even seen it.

<comment><USER8> It also makes me slightly angry towards the person who gave away my email address. Although most must be forgiven because they are not aware of what they did.</comment></comment>


Help stop the spread of Covid-19 with contact tracing – Singapore gov app - <AUTHOR> https://www.tracetogether.gov.sg/ <comment><USER2> From the video - it is exchanging encrypted IDs between 2 phones over bluetooth, this is potentially huge if adopted around the world. I wonder if other governments can get in touch with SG government to fork this solution if privacy across countries is of concern.</comment>


The Ketchup Conundrum (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum <comment><USER2>
       doomed to eat Heinz

There's worse things, like going to a nice restaurant for brunch and finding they offer some organic ketchup (occasionally even Hunts) or worse... make their own. Sir Kensingtons is okay, but not great.

Some people just want to dispute the fact that Heinz is, empirically, a great product. In my opinion, Heinz might even be a special case of this. What I mean by this is I'm not sure I've ever used Heinz somewhere where I thought "you know, Sir Kensingtons would really be better in this situation".

French's mustard is good, but not as versatile. I'd easily prefer a sandwich with Beaver over French's in most cases, but French's over any dijon for a hot dog. For mayo, Hellmans is closer to the class Heinz is in, but I'm happy with Kewpie in many cases over Hellmans, and a home-made aioli/mayo can bring something extra to certain dishes. That being said, I'd rather take Kewpie over Kraft Mayo and always over miracle whip.

Peanut butter is a little trickier. The major brands are all very good - Skippy, Jif. Off brands can be good. I don't mind old fashioned peanut butter, but it can't compare to the creaminess/texture of the big guys. It's also a pain in the ass to stir it and putting it in the fridge as a hack for that is a terrible workaround.

<comment><USER3> I'll disagree. I find Heinz to be saccharine sweet to the point of inedibility. That's a little hyperbolic, obviously, it's edible, I just strongly prefer a ketchup that doesn't have the overwhelming flavor of sugar.

I do not enjoy Heinz's product, I prefer a ketchup with a flavor closer to tomatoes -- a sharper, brighter, more earthy flavor.

<comment><USER4> That's almost the entire argument against putting ketchup on hot dogs. Hot dogs are already pretty sweet, and ketchup just makes them sweet to the point where every other flavor is masked.

I know it's probably overly judgmental, but I can't stand it when people put ketchup on a steak. You might as well eat tofu, which has the benefit of being cheaper, not killing an animal, and not insulting the person who cooked the steak. I know there are some reasonable counter-arguments to this, but I would feel personally insulted if someone put ketchup on a steak I made.

That being said, I could see a less-sweet ketchup actually being pretty good on a sausage of some kind, probably a smoked polish or italian. Don't tell anyone else from Chicago I said that though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good read, as with anything by Gladwell, but I have a few quibbles (as with anything by Gladwell):

> There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, > sour, bitter, and umami.

I always hate when folks call savoury 'umami' instead. We already have a perfectly good word in English for the taste; we don't need to add a new one!

> And so he turned to ketchup, because, alone among the condiments on the > table, ketchup could deliver sweet and sour and salty and bitter and umami, > all at once.

I'm pretty sure A1 & HP deliver much the same effect. Even Worcestershire sauce does.

Finally, and most importantly: there's a much simpler reason for the failure of World's Best Ketchup to take over the market: no-one is likely to trust a product named 'World's Best' to actually _be_ the best. Grey Poupon seems to come from France, with its name & packaging: one is tempted to believe that it's an ancient brand, one which might well be excellent — or even the world's best. But World's Best Ketchup is clearly new, and there's no particular reason for me to believe it's actually all that good. It could have just been invented by some team of accountants in a conference room at the Holiday Inn.

Never mind that Grey Poupon isn't actually French. Never mind that Jim Wigon really seems to love his ketchup. The vast majority of folks don't know those facts.

<comment><USER6> And I suspect if Heinz and World's Best switched marketing budgets that somehow this article would suddenly be about how World's Best hits all the right flavor notes and Heinz is "lower amplitude."

<comment><USER7> Well if you're actually using blind taste tests, then none of that matters. The point is that branding yourself as "World's Best" can negatively affect your product due to psychology.

Two ketchup brands on a hot dog or sitting in a souffle container for dipping fries doesn't fall victim to this. I don't know which brand is which, so I cannot pre-judge the ketchup. If you place the bottles in my face, "World's Best" preemtively makes me say, "'World's Best'? I doubt it." I've set negative expectations for the ketchup before I have even had a taste.

There was a spot on NPR (I think the TED Radio Hour) that talked about taste being linked to more than just the senses. Mood, lighting, atmosphere, and a whole host of other things can affect taste. They went on to say that a $75 steak from a steak house tends to be better rated in taste than a $20 steak from a normal restaurant for the reason listed above. The steaks can come from the same cut, stored in the same location, prepared by the same person using the same cookware, utensils and seasonings. The upscale steakhouse would have a better ambiance, and the psychological preparation for eating a $75 steak plays with your taste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "The difference between high and low amplitude is the difference between my > son and a great pianist playing 'Ode to Joy' on the piano," Chambers says. > ... Pepperidge Farm shortbread cookies are considered to have high > amplitude. So are Hellman's mayonnaise and Sara Lee poundcake. [So are Coke > and Pepsi.]

Ugh. Give me low-amplitude foods, then...

Also, sounds like Coke and Sara Lee poundcake might be more comparable to "Happy Birthday" or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand:" bland and popular. "Ode to Joy" performed by a great pianist is a specialized taste usually only experienced by people who care about what they listen to.

<comment><USER8> >Ugh. Give me low-amplitude foods, then...

Exactly. Doritos and Mountain Dew thrive on this concept of "amplitude", and they're palette annihilating crap for which "moderation" is so far removed from typical consumption that it hardly even enters into the model. Amplitude is at its core, a trick on the senses, and once you're out of your teens/twenties it's not a very nice one.

I would also point out the difference between traditional sources of "amplitude" (mayo is a good example mentioned in the article, fish sauces would be another) are almost _always_ condiments, sauces, or soup bases. There is a difference between the expectation that you use some mayo on your sandwich, and the expectation that you should drink soda.

<comment><USER6> I say for maximum amplitude you should do both: Put Hellman's mayonnaise in your Pepsi. Then dip your Sara Lee poundcake in it. And cover that in Heinz ketchup. Maximum amplitude EXTREME BAJA BLAST #YOLO.

<comment><USER8> Oh... you joke, but I have a good friend who has some interesting issues (totally worth adapting to them, he's a great guy) especially around foods and tastes and smells. He figured out that you can buy flavoring from those big labs out in New Jersey, and they make _everything_.

He has a different mouthwash for each day of the week, and one of them is Bermuda grass. To his credit, it _really_ tastes specifically like fresh Bermuda grass. So... your idea might not be unattainable, and IIRC soda is one of the forms those companies often experiment in.

YOLO indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting timing. This article was referred to by a founder of Sir Kensington's ketchup (subsequently condiment) company in an interview on NPR founders series "From Scratch" [1] on Mar 27, 17. He mentioned that this helped confirm their belief that there could be a future in their product/start-up. It was an interesting interview. As is so often the case, they didn't have a clue what they were doing when they started-up, or even that they were "starting up". Recommended.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2017/03/27/521698574/brendan-kennedy- co-f...](http://www.npr.org/2017/03/27/521698574/brendan-kennedy-co-founder- of-privateer)

</comment><comment><USER10> how about A1 sauce and barbecue sauce.. aren't those variants of ketchup

<comment><USER11> >barbecue sauce.. aren't those variants of ketchup

Dont go around the carolinas saying something like that! You are likely thinking of Memphis style barbecue sauce, which is often katchup based, where the carolinas use a vinegar based sauce.[1]

I'm not sure if i would call 2 cups of vinegar and some seasoning[2] ketchup

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_sauce#Variations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_sauce#Variations)

[2][http://allrecipes.com/recipe/58486/eastern-north-carolina- bb...](http://allrecipes.com/recipe/58486/eastern-north-carolina-bbq-sauce/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd argue that a new ketchup did come along eventually ... Sriracha

</comment><comment><USER13> Funny - ketchup in the 1800's could be made from fish, nuts, mushrooms, pretty much anything savory. Tomato somehow became the only sauce we now call 'ketchup' out of dozens of candidates.

The 'world's best ketchup' IMHO is mushroom-based.

<comment><USER13> e.g. [http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/condiments/ketchup/ket...](http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/condiments/ketchup/ketchup- roundup2.asp)</comment></comment>


Devs unknowingly use "malicious" modules snuck into official Python repository - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/devs-unknowingly-use-malicious-modules-put-into-official-python-repository/ <comment><USER2> The casual culture of pulling in hundred of dependencies, and mushrooming language specific package managers is ridiculously insecure and has to go.

There is no way for anyone to know what all this code is doing, there is little way to verify updates and its simply untenable.

If some developers like this sort of unsafe practice it should be strictly limited to their machines and in no way make it across in any form as a deployment artifact.

There are already secure distribution package managers with the necessary infrastructure, you are not special, use those. Ruby is already paying a price for imposing dependency hell of users and wasting millions of man hours. Many have suffered and do not even bother with Ruby apps anymore. Node and others who think this is a good model will be next. Users should simply boycott such user hostile developers and languages that encourage this kind of insecurity.

<comment><USER3> Everything we do in life relies on a trust system more or less. Reproducible build only guarantees integrity, not the trustworthiness of the code.

> There is no way for anyone to know what all this code is doing, there is > little way to verify updates and its simply untenable.

Because few people have time to read source code. Take Django as an example. Big community, lots of contributors. Can we say we should trust the code because the number of eyes? Probably, but not always.

Why? We can overlook and pretend the code is legitmate. Take Linux kernel or some of the crypto projects out there. A lot of unreadable old tricks made backdoor really easy. [1] is interesting because someone apparently made an authorized changeset to BitKeeper. Are you going to read JRE code to make sure no backdoor? Nah.

Is there a solution? Nope and will never have a solution. The best one can do is using a DVCS to prevent unathorized changeset (provided every contributor does a sanity check for pulling in changeset) and trust the community. No machine can distinugish a good code from a bad code. Humans can't even tell unless raising a red flag.

Sometimes change of project ownership can also introduce some uncertainty, but that is a rare case for major projects.

I am pretty confident there are code in the Linux kernel no one has ever touched or ever read for years.

[1]: [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux- backdoor-...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-backdoor- attempt-of-2003/)

<comment><USER4> Distributions - let's take Debian as a concrete example - provide an audit trail to individual identified developers as a mitigation for users relying on trust. Just because we must necessarily rely on some level of trust does not mean that we must blindly trust, which is what happens when anyone can upload to a repository such as PyPI.

<comment><USER3> As far as I know, once the project name is taken, that ownership belongs to the account first created this package in PyPI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The IP address it phones home to, 184.108.40.206, is located in China and visiting it with HTTP just displays this interesting message:

        Hi bro :)

        Welcome Here!

        Leave Messages via HTTP Log Please :)

        On 2017-09-16:

        Happy to see somebody find it ! :)

        Just curious about how long it would take for people to find those 'bad' packages

        As you see, that's just a toy script, no harm, hope you enjoy it !

It looks like someone (security researcher?) just set up a PoC and didn't intend to actually "weaponise" it.

<comment><USER6> It may be [https://pytosquatting.org/](https://pytosquatting.org/). In that case it was indeed a harmless and quite useful PoC.

<comment><USER7> No. (Co-operator of pytosquatting here)

While our code was similar in nature, it was non-obfuscated and we always threw an exception telling the user that he installed something he shouldn't.

<comment><USER8> But you still call an URL first, e.g. [https://www.pytosquatting.org/pingback/pypi/urllib2/](https://www.pytosquatting.org/pingback/pypi/urllib2/) for "urllib2" before raising the exception. Though it is not an IP in China and only returns the text "Pingback from package urllib2 in repository pypi".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One nice thing about languages like C is that a lot of programmers just avoid dependencies because dealing with them kind of sucks. That's one solution to this problem.

<comment><USER6> Yeah this way you reinvent a less unit tested, battle field tested and documented wheel.

It's like saying the good thing with not having a cellphone is that you avoid a lot of fight with your girlfriend cause you can't talk as much.

<comment><USER10> > It's like saying the good thing with not having a cellphone is that you > avoid a lot of fight with your girlfriend cause you can't talk as much.

I can't quite see what's wrong with that...

<comment><USER11> Do you have a cellphone? If so, throw it into the trash right now.

<comment><USER9> I would if I had a girlfriend and she was ok with it. I feel like it's hard to date without one which really sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FYI: "Malicious software libraries found in PyPI posing as well known libraries"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256121)

(2 days ago, 465 points, 245 comments)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a rehash of: [https://hackernoon.com/building-a-botnet-on-pypi- be1ad280b8d...](https://hackernoon.com/building-a-botnet-on-pypi-be1ad280b8d6)

Interestingly, my fake system packages have been downloaded about 480 000 times so far this year

<comment><USER14> Ouch, and thanks for being proactive getting those names squatted

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well pip has the same problem as NPM : no namespaces by default.

But NPM is worse with all its dependencies of dependencies. Composer (PHP) got both namespace and dependencies right: flat dependencies, it's up to the developer to resolve conflicts, not to the package manager to create insane dependency trees.

It leads to more stable packages and make spotting fakes easier.

<comment><USER16> I'd say pip is definitely worse. Things like local dependencies, requirements.txt, and virtual env feel hacked add-ons to make pip more like npm

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Original advisory (including fake packages): [http://www.nbu.gov.sk/skcsirt- sa-20170909-pypi/](http://www.nbu.gov.sk/skcsirt-sa-20170909-pypi/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The other day, I was using rmarkdown and noticed that every time it ran it tried to source this:

[https://mathjax.rstudio.com/2.7.2/MathJax.js?config=TeX- AMS-...](https://mathjax.rstudio.com/2.7.2/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS- MML_HTMLorMML)

This was really disconcerting since I did not expect to be downloading anything, let alone running javascript from there just to make a chart.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think there is a value in upgrading the cheeseshop to use "verified maintainers" \- it should be simple to do a first pass of "the person who signed the hash of this module has also verified they own the domain requests.kreitz.org by publishing that public key at that domains root"

Even more useful might be domain/keys/kreitz/publickeylisting

The key signing party is much harder to arrange but is easier to be confident about

Personally I am surprised the Post Office does not do key signing

Edit: I thought pip did do cryptographic checks?!

<comment><USER20> > _I think there is a value in upgrading the cheeseshop to use "verified > maintainers" \- it should be simple to do a first pass of "the person who > signed the hash of this module has also verified they own the domain > requests.kreitz.org by publishing that public key at that domains root"_

That sounds useless. An attacker could verify that they own evilattacker.com & publish their malicious packages there.

I don't think a web of trust is the answer here, because it doesn't really matter if the attack is anonymous or not, and if only trusted people can publish packages, trust will be given more readily to encourage new programmers to contribute.

I think a reputation/review system is better, like docker search's star count, or metacpan's ++ rating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do you check if you are affected?

<comment><USER22> The list is in the advisory. Check if you have installed any of these:

      – acqusition (uploaded 2017-06-03 01:58:01, impersonates acquisition)
      – apidev-coop (uploaded 2017-06-03 05:16:08, impersonates apidev-coop_cms)
      – bzip (uploaded 2017-06-04 07:08:05, impersonates bz2file)
      – crypt (uploaded 2017-06-03 08:03:14, impersonates crypto)
      – django-server (uploaded 2017-06-02 08:22:23, impersonates django-server-guardian-api)
      – pwd (uploaded 2017-06-02 13:12:33, impersonates pwdhash)
      – setup-tools (uploaded 2017-06-02 08:54:44, impersonates setuptools)
      – telnet (uploaded 2017-06-02 15:35:05, impersonates telnetsrvlib)
      – urlib3 (uploaded 2017-06-02 07:09:29, impersonates urllib3)
      – urllib (uploaded 2017-06-02 07:03:37, impersonates urllib3)

<comment><USER21> Really close call (I have the correct version of setuptools installed which is what had me worried).</comment></comment></comment>


Sam Altman: 'Too many' Y Combinator companies raise money - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/21/sam-altman-too-many-y-combinator-companies-raise-money/ <comment><USER3> Was just thinking the other day, it'd be super interesting if YC ran some YC Equity/YC UBI experiments within its own network. Basically in joining YC, each YC member would be granted a percentage of YC's 7% stake in all of the YC companies which would reduce their need to fundraise. In theory, YC members should all be highly motivated achievers and use that percentage stake to move their diverse set of businesses forward.

Since there is such a high barrier to entry into YC, it might not prove shared equity/UBI would 100% work in the real world. However, coming at it from the other side, it could provide some early clues as to whether a shared equity/UBI could ever work at all. For example:

\- Would YC companies cheer each other on with positive peer pressure/be more motivated to knowledge share or would low achieving YC companies de-motivate high achieving YC companies? Would YC companies who fold be allowed to retain their percentage of the YC stake?

\- Would high achieving startups bypass YC or be attracted to YC?

\- Would every set of new annual entrants into YC be seen as diluting the value of the existing YC equity or additive? Would existing YC companies want more say in the selection process? Would Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe receive the same percentage of YC stake as new entrants?

\- How do you socialize the concept with existing stakeholders (i.e. existing YC partners) who would be diluted?

\- Is it better to implement it as a single monolithic YC group or divide it by YC Class?

Assuming ~1500 YC companies with ~10 employees each, that'd be about 15,000 participants, which would be a pretty good dogfooding [0] experiment!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)

<comment><USER4> I am interested in trying some version of this! Have been thinking about all the edge cases.

<comment><USER5> That'll be expensive. On the order of 100's of millions per year at that scale. 15,000 * 1000 = 15 M / month for an amount that would move the needle, but still not enough to live off.

<comment><USER3> You're right and maybe its more about providing the YC participants with a vested interest in the overall success of all the YC companies than providing them with a guaranteed income for life.

You'd want to size it to provide enough equity to turn the 15,000 participants into active evangelists of the larger network of YC companies than just their own individual startup.

And yes it is expensive. There are definitely significant parallels in that sense to the larger UBI discussion :)

<comment><USER5> > You'd want to size it to provide enough equity to turn the 15,000 people > into active evangelists of the larger network of YC companies than just > their own individual startup.

They already do this, for free. The YC alumni network is a vast resource and a substantial force behind the recruitment of new start-ups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the artificially-created real estate "shortage" problem in the Bay Area was solved, lots of other problems would be solved.

\- Companies raising money just to pay inflated (yet still insufficient) labour costs

\- People who would love to work for startups but realize that most startup salaries barely gets you a studio apt, pretty cool until you have a family

\- Companies who "cant find" talent

Is it any surprise companies need to raise so much funding, esp when operating out of the Bay Area?

<comment><USER7> To me this leads to a question about the Bay Area centric techno-spehere: at what point do the prices become so high that companies/ecosystems in other parts of the country become relatively attractive?

I understand that the SV network is a real and powerful thing, but holding all else equal (indulge me), wouldn't it make the cost of startups more attractive for all stakeholders if an alternative, viable network were in Buffalo or Nashville or Boise or wherever? Is it just a matter of lack of coalescence?

<comment><USER8> A siblung comment writes:

> doing startup things

I believe the network in the Bay Area is valuable. However, I don't know concrete examples of benefits that being based in the Bay Area brings. From my perspective as an upcoming newgrad, the companies in the Bay Area are great, but their location is decided by the founders/stockholders/executives. I'll try to see what are the pros for these people.

Off the top of my head:

\- Nice weather

\- Proximity to LA, meaning access to nice events or parties

\- Proximity to friends. People who you've met through events in the area

\- Proximity to other startup executives to exchange thoughts on company matters. (The bigger the company to share thoughts with, the better)

\+ Same for counselling investors

\- Proximity to investors or possible investors

\+ Tangent: if your connections can afford to live in the area and are relatively comfortable, then they might have many thousands of dollars to spare.

\- Proximity to Stanford, Berkeley, and other big name universities

\- Culture that appreciates tech, such that many people like to discuss new technology

I can't think of other big benefits of being based in the Bay Area from the perspective of the biggest shareholders of a company/founders/executives.

<comment><USER9> These people are on the site, let them speak for themselves.

I don't see what a clueless new grad, wildly speculating, adds to the discussion.

Especially as you say the weather first, while the real reason is probably money, money, money, money, money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Early YC: Small, gets disproportionate number of wins. Develops top tier reputation.

Later YC: Expands significantly due to the added prestige, and now performs much closer to the mean.

Today: Sam says that "too many YC companies are getting funded".

Is this fundamentally different from a mutual fund that yields 25% above market for a few years in a row and then performs closer to the mean for the following decade? In the mutual fund game, it's very common (hence Vanguard).

Surely during those top performing years the mutual fund managers strongly believe that they have deep insights that are the root cause of their funds' performance. But the following decade proves otherwise.

<comment><USER11> There probably are deep insights that lead to the root cause of success in both situations. Once these insights are made public or more people discover and exploit them on a widespread level, the market inefficiencies that gave the possibility for outperformance then disappear. If you don't find a new edge, you revert to the mean (or maybe rather, the "mean" catches up to you).

<comment><USER12> I think olfactory's implication is that they get lucky at first, develop a reputation due to that luck, then revert to the mean. That there is no secret sauce at all.

It's an interesting theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I'm misinterpreting but in a way it sounds like he's saying that YC sometimes (often?) bet on ideas / teams that turn out to be crap. Well, of course that's going to be true.

Just they same, prestige or not, track record or not, it's also possible that not all ideas / teams were the right fit for the YC program. That is, yes within YC they were bad bets, but that's not to say things won't change once they're away from the VC dynamic.

Finally, perhaps he feels that by others putting money into what YC might consider a lost cause, those others will eventually realize what YC realized? But now the losses of others could be "blamed" on YC and thus tarnish the YC brand going forward?

<comment><USER14> > Finally, perhaps he feels that by others putting money into what YC might > consider a lost cause those others will eventually realize what YC realized?

It's hard for 3rd parties to discern this, when YC has given the very companies being criticized seed money. Pair that with the competitiveness between angels and VCs, plus FOMO; and it gets even harder.

<comment><USER13> I was trying to say that if some post-YC VC comes up short he/she might say "WTF does YC know..."

Hear that often enough and loud enough and the shine that is YC's will be less. Clearly YC / Sam benefits from being up the food chain not down it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems like a signalling problem. If a YC company looks for funding at some point _after_ demo day, the first question VCs ask is going to be "why didn't you raise money at demo day?" \-- so there's going to be an incentive for companies to go after money at demo day even if they're not ready simply because it will be much harder if they wait.

I wonder if it would be effective to tell YC companies that they can participate in _a_ demo day, but it doesn't have to be the one for their batch -- so a company could wait and join the following cohort in order to avoid the stigma of being "the company which couldn't get funding at demo day and is now going around to VCs one by one".

<comment><USER5> Ironically it might be a lot easier to raise money as long as there is less substance to the company. Dreams of getting in on the ground floor work so much better to woo investors with visions of Dropbox and Airbnb in their heads than a year old start-up without traction.

Besides that after that year the start-up will likely be out of runway and so in a much harder position to negotiate from.

If I were to run a YC backed company (which I won't be doing) I'd definitely use demo day to it's full potential.

<comment><USER16> Listen to the AirBnB story on the podcast "How I built this". Before YC, nobody wanted to invest in AirBnB and the company wasn't profitable. YC is how founders find ideas (in the case of Reddit) or refine them. (in the case of AirBnB) In the end, the short time offered in YC allows founders to create the minimum viable product and start to or continue to gain users. The fact that so many companies gain some form of investment shows that YC is a success! Some companies may eventually fail, but YC is a success.

<comment><USER17> Is it? I feel like they get so many applications and the bar is so high now that most of the teams are already getting steady revenues before even getting in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know a fair bit of YC companies, and a trend is clear from the last few years. As they say: it's not that YC picks the best startups, it's that the startups they pick "become" the best startups (i.e. crappy companies look good just for being in YC).

This definitely isn't healthy, and I'm glad they at least recognize it.

<comment><USER19> Seen this from the beginning of 2011. Raise the money, throw a dotcom-grade party at MGM Grand, spend like there is no tomorrow. No worries, the product and customers don't matter much. Networking and hustling are everything this is all about. Rinse and repeat.

This is unhealthy and could not last for too long.

<comment><USER18> I disagree. Sure some do that, but a lot don't and focus on data on customers and are hard working. Even bad companies are hard working. It's just sometimes the founders can't get the product to have a product-market-fit. And product- market-fit is a lot harder to achieve than an outsider (of a startup) would think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b This seems to fit a continuous change in YC and perhaps tech in general. YC doesn't seem so eager to fund 1000 startups so that 2 of them become unicorns anymore.

It's more like they want to fund 1000 startups so that 100 are sustainable.

We don't hear moonshot or billion dollar market depth or hyper growth as much as we used

Anyone feeling the same?

<comment><USER5> > It's more like they want to fund 1000 startups so that 100 are sustainable.

That's actually good, not bad. 100 companies that work out long term are _much_ better for the founders involved than two that are unicorns.

<comment> d--b I agree it's way better!

I think in PG times, the idea was: aim for the moon, it's hard but if it doesn't work out you'll find plenty of well paid jobs.

But now the market is so overcrowded that if you aim for the moon and fail, you'll mostly look like moron, and will have a hard time finding a gig.

Just gut feelings though, I have no numbers nor people to talk to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not being in a position / deciding not to raise money has helped me immensely. It's also been hard. A little bit of raising money is "getting out" of work... you raise money to feel good and successful, but the work of the startup still isn't done. I've had to bear the full burden. If I would have raised, it would have muddied the waters. I would have 10 different priorities, other than writing the software.

</comment><comment><USER21> The irony of the game is that having money in the bank let you hire great people and pivot to the right idea, but to raise money you need great people and the right idea. So, MAYBE, it's not that bad of a thing to raise even if you don't have everything figured out yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> YC participation is a stamp of approval. Unless YC intends to take on responsibility for follow on funding in some kind of exclusivity - which on the record from a partner at YC is definitely _not_ in the plan [1] - then Sam will just have to live with that. After all, companies are - for now - <USER2> free to try to raise funding from outsiders once YC has made their bet.

On another note, it's those investors money to waste, if they want to burn it on companies that don't make it then in the long term this will self-correct because there will be less money available from such investors.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15928335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15928335)

</comment><comment><USER22> > I think there's sort of this halo around being a Y Combinator company, where > companies raise money that perhaps shouldn't.

This is such a strange sentiment. YC has invested in all of these companies, then they pooh pooh others that follow their lead?

<comment><USER23> I think it's an honest comment about the "Halo-effect" the YC stamp can have on investors.

One useful counterfactual is thinking about what our comments would be if Sam said "more YC company should raise money immediately after the program". I think it would be very hard to defend that every (most?) startup is ready for such a commitment at that very specific moment in time.

<comment><USER22> But YC is already making the claim that every company in the program is ready for investment. It's doing so by investing in them.

<comment><USER24> They invest based on very little data. It's more a gamble, but they gamble at scale, with good odds.

It doesn't mean every one of them is good. They don't know which one is good with the data they had, but are wise enough to accept they know little and instead chose to invest in several.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that too many startups go to Y Combinator! Many of them can bootstrap!

Y Combinator prefers to get 6% of more companies to increase the chance of winning the jack pot.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't one of the reasons to join YC is to find ways to get funding? Even in the Standford videos, there's a lot of focus on the topic of raising money.

I think Sam's point (or concern) is with the so-called "Startup-Culture". There's a big focus on...

-1 Presenting a basic idea

-2 Get into Y-Combinator

-3 ???

-4 Profit

Or, I think that's how startups are interpreting what being an entrepreneur is all about.

I think Sam's point is that the product shouldn't be a placebo that happens to raise money. Or, to better say it, you are not here to be good at fundraising. You are here to be good at making a product that will (wait for it) change the world.

I think the success of those so-called unicorns (Dropbox, AirBnb, Twitch, etc.) had caused this problem. There are a lot of investors that are willing to spend away hoping for something to stick and to become profitable. On the other hand, there are a lot of startups who's soul purpose is to be good at selling a 'not fully realized' idea, raise a ton of money, and then cash out. Oh, and have 'fun' while doing it. Why? because it works!

It reminds me of the Hubspot videos with Daniel Lyons. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVSLLvHceSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVSLLvHceSA)

Now, if someone was banging on my door desperate to give me a crazy amount of money with almost no strings attached to but into my 'shell of a product' I may consider taking the offer. But doing so may benefit me, but could cause harm to those who really have a great world-changing idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> He's probably right, didn't Airbnb struggle for about a year after graduation?

<comment><USER28> By any chance, do you have further readings on this? We're also a struggling marketplace and would take great motivation from this.

<comment><USER29> Look at your competitors. What do they legally have to do to operate? Licensing, taxes, insurance, permits, etc.. Tally up all those things. Then stop paying them. Now you can offer lower rates than competitors. If the government tells you that you have to do certain things hire a lawyer and claim that you aren't actually in the industry that you are in.

<comment><USER30> Bonus points: Instead of employees use contractors, and instead of making capital investments make your contractors do it. Just make sure you can change the terms of service at any time, without consultation.

Externalize all your costs, keep all the revenue!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This guy is not really a good thing for YC, I honestly stopped caring that much about this incubator after that guy who was in before him left. Sam Altman should be removed.

<comment><USER32> I love the ambition of this dude to call out the valley to reach for more than what it is. The field needs 10000 more Sam Altmans.

<comment><USER33> I prefer a VC that doesn't inject a political agenda.

<comment><USER32> You prefer a VC that isnt human. All humans inject their politics into every action they take. Accept it.

<comment><USER33> Not quite. Fund managers generally have a fiduciary responsibility to their limited partners, meaning they are required to act in ways guided first and foremost by what increases ROI.

There's a lot of room for interpretation there about short term vs long term gains, the investor value of creating sustainable businesses, and of course the biases the manager's own political views inject into their decision making. But he or she must still act with investor ROI in mind by investing in the companies they honestly think likely to succeed and then help them do so. To fail to do so would be to face investor revolt and possible lawsuits, and undermines those hard working entrepreneurs who take their companies in different (and maybe more profitable) directions than their investor had in mind. I don't like that.

To rephrase what I originally said, I prefer my investors to be economically rational in their motivation, not political. Hence I have never sought YC investment under Mr. Altman, nor do I intend to. Thankfully I've done just fine without.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there any way for YC to build its prestige and the sense of value it delivers without being a positive signal?

<comment><USER35> Yes, this forum. This forum makes it marginally easier for their companies to get recognition and hire employees. Additionally, if you look at the really successful companies that have come out of the program, they were all funded by YC when they took on far less companies.

<comment><USER36> Well, companies take many years to reach that stage of success, so of course all the successful companies will have come from the past batches when batches were smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It sounds to me like Sam was just trying to say that the reputation of YC- backed companies often preceeds them and that VCs look at YC graduates with rose tinted glasses, which they perhaps should not. Doesn't seem like a bad thing to say at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Unless I am mistaken, literally all YC companies raise money. They do it from YC itself.

There are lots of ways you could spin it, but how can Sam justify such a statement when they've invested in all of these companies too?

<comment><USER38> The difference between the first round and future rounds can be significant. Sometimes there's no company, and since there's no company, a company isn't raising money. Often the prospective founders don't start working on their product until they raise, even making it contingent on raising money, which means up until Demo Day the founders haven't tried to build their product and raise money at the same time. Finally, most aren't raising based on market traction – at YC stage it's valid not to have any market traction (though having traction at that stage is also valid).

<comment><USER22> By this logic, YC is investing even before the point that others shouldn't be investing, which would make even less sense.

<comment><USER38> Hmm, I was going to say that at YC they're investing on the team more than the product, and they can afford to do that, but I think investing primarily based on the team is common after the seed round too. So I concede that it doesn't make logical sense that the YC startups are too early to invest, if you have the right investor, that is going to play a similar role to YC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Aka... 'too many' companies go on to raise outside money and dilute ycombinator shares. How unfortunate that ycombinator can invest a limited amount of money and have graduates turn around and get 10x as much from other investors. It must be stopped!

Also, I'll have some serious respect for YC if I'm not banned for this comment =)

<comment><USER5> YC does not control HN. So that won't get you banned but trolling for a ban just might.

<comment><USER39> If the trolling gets me a response from one of HN's most famous members then so be it

edit: You gotta admit, my point isn't groundless. I would disagree that it's trolling since HN is owned by YC but if you're right about them not using their position to silence criticism I respect that</comment></comment></comment>


Problems with$_8b7b="\x63\x72\, eval(base64_ hacks and rr.nu domain redirects - <AUTHOR> http://domesticenthusiast.blogspot.com/2012/03/dyslexic-mayans-want-to-sell-you-cialis.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I got my WP installation hacked again and thought this tutorial could come in handy for checking and removing the malware code for some of you.

<comment><USER2> You might want to check out maldet[0], it does a good job of finding this kind of malware. It supposedly has functionality that'll clean base64 encodes and gzipped base64 but I haven't managed to get it to work. I've posted a comment detailing the problem but the mod hasn't allowed it to be posted yet. Suffice to say, don't trust the cleaning function. I'd love for someone else to test this though.

[0] <http://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-malware-detect/></comment></comment>


Physicists create tabletop antimatter gun - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-06-physicists-tabletop-antimatter-gun.html

<comment><USER2> Are there tabletop petawatt lasers to go with this tabletop positron source?</comment>


Harvard's Chemistry Chair Charged on Alleged Undisclosed Ties to China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-chemistry-chair-charged-on-alleged-undisclosed-ties-to-china-11580228768 <comment><USER2> Wow. I cannot fathom what Charlie did to incur the wrath of the Illuminati like this. I remember commenting months ago when the administration announced these policies that nearly all faculty at the top five are guilty of this (racist, nationalist nonsense charge) by default. That's still true. However CL got singled out as an example is the real story, and I don't know the answer... Envy?</comment>


Ask HN: What craft do you like working on? - <AUTHOR>

I tried my hand at ceramics and found the craft to be very soothing and unlike anything I'd tried before. Do you work on honing any similar craft? <comment><USER2> It depends on your definition of "craft" but I ride the piss out of motorcycles, and as a consequence, rebuild them as well. And when I say rebuild, I mean ripping the engine out, tearing it down to every nut and bolt, and rebuilding it from the crankshaft up. The skills I've learned while working on my bikes (patience comes to mind) help me in other parts of my life as well, including programming.</comment>


Kids not doing their chores? Use broadband as currency - <AUTHOR> http://boscotan.tumblr.com/post/25772298402/the-parenting-broadband-router

<comment><USER2> I guess this relies on you having limited broadband – not sure why anyone would use a company that has limits though in the first place!

A while ago I had unlimited broadband. Then my ISP changed to 10GB cap – I only found this out because we went almost 100GB over the limit... It was cheaper to pay the cancellation fee than to pay up – thankfully my new ISP is actually unlimited! I really hate ISPs.</comment>


Sourceforge Attack: Full Report - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-attack-full-report/

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this is a 'full report'. For example:

> There was a root privilege escalation on one of our platforms which > permitted exposure of credentials that were then used to access machines > with externally-facing SSH.

How are the credentials exposed after escalation? What accounts on the externally-facing SSH machines were used? Why was it a problem that the externally-facing SSH machines could be accessed? Was the access through root accounts? Why do externally-facing SSH machines allow remote root-login?

Besides, why can I still download projects when the data validation is still ongoing?

Furthermore, the 'full report' does not say anything what SF.net plans about their ssh servers.

I understand the SF.net team does its best, but I am not so happy with that report.

<comment><USER3> What I really want is a list of compromised projects. They say it takes time to verify that, but I really hope they keep us posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but this is ridiculous:

"Our analysis uncovered (among other things) a hacked SSH daemon, which was modified to do password capture. We don't have reason to [believe] the attacker was successful in collecting passwords."

You don't have reason to believe they weren't either. Why write this?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps one would have expected log entries or an updated atime?

<comment><USER4> Someone has root. Everything on the system can't be trusted.

The assumption should be the opposite, by default.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between digital forensics and "the virus scanner says it's clean, let's start loading the credit card data". As a forensics statement, this makes perfect sense - and note that they (say they) have reset all passwords, so it's not like they rely on this.

<comment><USER6> i can verify that i received a password reset email from sourceforge on saturday, that explained there had been an attempt made to get at the passwords, and that rather than wasting time speculating on if they had been compromised, they were just doing a system wide password reset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting read, both regarding the attack vector, actual damage and their current plans to get everything back up and running.

</comment><comment><USER8> The number of people whining about CVS support possibly being deprecated is amazing, get with the 21st century people.

<comment><USER9> What's especially depressing is how many people let Eclipse support determine their source control strategy. IDE FTL.</comment></comment>


Why a Successful Valley Entrepreneur Started a Tech Incubator in Ghana - <AUTHOR> http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/jorn-lyseggen/ <comment><USER2> Seeding entrepreneurialism in emerging markets makes sense both altruistically and in return potential for an investor -- you're not competing in a saturated market, like say seed investing in the valley, and costs are low. If you can solve the other side, such as access to capital, M&A opportunity, and potentially international customers, as Jorn is doing, you're in a great place.

The part about training for business conduct feels a bit iffy in tone from the level of detail it goes into. I bought a company in Germany a few years back, and my Canadian sensibilities certainly offended folks until I learned the rules of the local culture. Any cross border business interactions are fraught with this.

A few of my friends are currently investing/managing a company out of Ghana. Extremely low investment has yielded a great growth curve, and they're changing how sub-Saharan Africans manage their finances. They're some of the happiest investor/entrepreneurs I know.

<comment><USER3> How do you make money off of people who don't have anything though?

<comment><USER4> It's about value creation. A band of enthusiasts in the middle of nowhere and with no resources to create anything will probably have a hard time bootstrapping a startup, especially when you consider the relative definitions of "no resources," but that's the point of starting an incubator: to help resource the enthusiasts.

If they can take what they get and run with it in pursuit of the idea that got them the investment, they've now created value where none previously existed. Commence the theoretical positive cascade of investments and growth and having an exit strategy so that investors and entrepreneurs get back a return on what they invested.

The part that's kinda taken on faith, though, is whether the value created will stay in the area. Unless there are huge incentives to stay local, I see the companies, exited founders, and investors all taking their funds and resources back into developed nations rather than staying local and perpetuating prosperity where they first laid their roots. There's hope that there'll be a will to stay local... but man, people tend to take whatever chance they can get to escape a bad place.

<comment><USER5> > The part that's kinda taken on faith, though, is whether the value created > will stay in the area. Unless there are huge incentives to stay local, I see > the companies, exited founders, and investors all taking their funds and > resources back into developed nations rather than staying local and > perpetuating prosperity where they first laid their roots.

Are you talking about the foreign investors or locals who've succeeded? I can see locals using their new wealth to escape, but if it's working that well for the foreign investors, I don't see why they'd leave (at least in the short term - over decades the brain drain effect would be real).

<comment><USER6> Escape? Those who wished to escape took different paths, visa lotteries and the like.

Those of us who've stayed back and are actively involved in tech entrepreneurship have little desire to leave. We would have already, we have the skills.

Ghana might not have it the best, but every country started like this. It takes dedication from its citizens to grow and that mindset is catching on now.

Not to detract from the rest of your answer though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "There's the old saying that A students become professors, B students become mid-level managers at large corporations and the C students endow buildings and professorships."

Is this really true? Where is from?

<comment><USER8> It is true that people with poor GPAs (to a certain extent) often do very well. They might achieve extreme results more often than people with better GPAs.

To what extent? The number is 2.9 [http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-barker- millionaires-bad-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-barker-millionaires- bad-grades-gpa-2017-6)

However, this just shows that they are outliers. It may turn out to be the case that there are just as many negative outliers for that GPA (or not, I don't know).

If you are asking if it is true that this is an old saying, I have heard the sentiment before many times. I can't remember the name of the book where someone said the people who got the to the moon were lead by a C-student but all of them had perfect GPAs. However, I don't know of that particular phrasing.

<comment><USER9> This 2.9 number comes from "Millionaire Mind," published in 2000 with the data from 1990s. The same book states that 2% of millionaires were in the top 1% of the college classes and 90% graduated from college. Note the huge amount of grade inflation since the surveyed millionaires graduated (their average age was 54, so they would be in college on average in the 1960s) and a large increase in the percentage of students attending colleges. And a myriad of possible selection biases. It doesn't seem like a good argument that people with poor GPAs do better than people with high GPAs.

[http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf](http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf)

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=p60tDntHVnUC&pg=PA99&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=p60tDntHVnUC&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99)

<comment><USER10> Exactly. How much money did those people start out with? If you're from a wealthy family and will work for the family business it doesn't matter what your GPA is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Q - Why a Successful Valley Entrepreneur Started a Tech Incubator in Ghana?

A - To make more money.

</comment><comment><USER12> >> One challenge has been the lack of engineering expertise to build infrastructure that scales. The 'WhatsApp for feature phones' company got more traffic than they could handle and could not scale up fast enough ...

If I remember correctly, at the time Saya was being built, GAE (google app engine) was available so couldn't they have just used that to take care of the scalability issues whiles they gradually developed local/in-house expertise?

I've always assumed the "easier path" would be to use GAE, Heroku or any other commercial PaaS until it becomes more economical to switch to an IaaS which is more hands-on and requires in-house devops or system admin skills.

<comment><USER13> You can't just throw an app at GAE, Heroku or any other PaaS and it'll magically scale. Even putting aside you have to have design the program for that kind of scaling, use the right language and database, a lot of apps will have hard bottlenecks in them. Table locks, disk access, API access, whatever it is.

That's part of the expertise he alludes to.

For example, one client had a small customer base (10s of thousands), but was already having to use Premium tier in Azure because of performance problems (P2). Very seasonal business, massive usage around Xmas.

The coming Xmas they knew they had a serious problem, triple the amount of users. The site would have gone down.

Bit of refactoring and performance tweaking from me and instead they never really went above 20% CPU and could sit on Azure's S2 tier (and realistically could have used S1).

I'm no scaling expert, but I at least knew where to look after a decade of working on real apps and reading articles about scaling on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seeing how many of the valles incubators focus on things that are sole needed by the inhabitants in the valley, this is a great chance to supply blindspot- markets with products & solutions.

</comment><comment><USER15> > We've had a few successes. One of our companies was acquired by an Accel > backed company.

> The other is Saya, the first African company to pitch at TechCrunch Disrupt. > Weeks before the event the founders didn't even have passports!

It is very cool that there are already success stories.

Without ever being in Africa, I lack the knowledge and wonder if the current infrastructure is capable of supporting knowledge-based economy on a broad scale, but it's certainly good to see that high tech businesses could thrive there, and incubators are getting created.

<comment><USER16> Most of these countries are developing countries with low education levels so obviously it can't be broad, but of course in any country there will be a segment of the population who are well educated and/or affluent. Take China, most Chinese are dirt poor but because there are so many Chinese you can go to modern enclaves like Shanghai and never experience this poverty.

In general however return on investment tends to be high in developing countries because they lack so much. There are lots of businesses you can start with minimum competition. E.g. I've seen many stories about poorely educated Chinese getting rich in Africa. They start shops, facories and all sorts of stuff lacking

<comment><USER17> >>poorely educated Chinese getting rich

Why can't educated Chinese do same ?

<comment><USER18> They can, and many do succeed. In the US right now, education is a proxy for class, so saying the uneducated Chinese can succeed is like saying the Chinese lower class can succeed, which isn't necessary true. It requires capital to start a business, not education.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I Ended Up with Element Queries, and How You Can Use Them Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/07/how-i-ended-up-with-element-queries-and-how-you-can-use-them-today/ <comment><USER2> Both devs of this project are HN readers, this is where they met!

I've been using this for over a year now and it's been a huge help for applying responsive styling to those hard-to-reach places or situations where you'd otherwise be writing a lot of JavaScript to help manage your styles for you.</comment>